KINEMATICAL CLASSIFICATION OF EVOLVING LOOPS AND BUBBLES

The evolution of cosmic loops (and bubbles) in an inflationary backgro und is governed by a hyperbolic fixed point. Associated with the four distinguished kinematical categories are loops which have or could not have undergone a world-sheet big bang, and which eventually collapse or else keep growing. In particular we discuss spontaneous creation of baby loops, and quantum nucleation of horizon-size loops. World-sheet scalar potentials are invoked to account for the electromagnetic self -interactions of charged and/or superconducting loops. The electromagn etic repulsion at short distances then acts to exclude stationary brea thing configurations provided their total charge Q is above a certain critical value set by the string tension/Hubble scale ratio. However, below that critical value there exist charged loops which classically are not inflated by inflation. Quantum-mechanical tunneling renders th e classically stable charged loops unstable, and the associated Basu-G uth-Vilenkin amplitude gets a contribution proportional to Q2 log Q2 f or small Q.